What Type of Writer Are You?

Read on and discover what type of writer you are or the kind of writer you never want to be.

The Mega-Organiser

You not only outline, you outline your outline.

You spend months making sure your research is water-tight, no simple Google search for you. Going directly to the source is your thing.

Forget method acting, you are all about the method writing. If your main character is a scuba diver we will find you spitting out your mouthpiece only to eat and relying on your tank to breathe at bed time.

Your pens are neatly lined up in order of colour shades. Your notes are meticulously organised into files and placed into relevant sections.

Novel writing will not begin until you know what the inside leg measurement is of all your minor characters and what your antagonist ate for breakfast in 1987.

The ‘It’ll be Fine’

You are a prime pantser.

Every problem you face within the writing process are met with the mantra, ‘It’ll be fine’.

You’re so chilled penguins rest on you.

You’re such a hippy about your writing life it’s like Sonny and Cher have been resurrected.

You laugh at plotters and cannot understand why anyone would want to plan a novel. Creativity just flows out of your pores, man.

Even if your publisher is screaming for your second novel now you’re a year late, you think nothing of telling them to take a chill pill because, you guessed it, it’ll be fine.

The ‘Ooh, Shiny’

You love the idea of being a writer, considering the fame and fortune to come. Writing for you is all about the shiny things.

You dream of your first novel being an instant best seller. You can even envisage the shiny cover.

Writing itself is a bore and a chore. You wonder if you actually must do it to reach the heady heights of celebrity, then you remember ghost writers exist. A multi-page spread in Hello magazine beckons.

The ‘Never Again’

You wrote something once and realised it was either too hard or it was crap, or possibly both.

You vowed never to write again. Therefore you’re probably not reading this post. Moving on…

The Know-It-All

You’ve been doing this writing gig before Jesus slipped on his first pair of sandals. You know everything there is to know about writing.

Writery world needs your wisdom in order to function. Young writers are your lifeblood. Leeching the joy and excitement out of them by telling them all the downfalls of writing keeps you going. The more competition you destroy the better.

Social media writing groups are your natural homes. Here you can pick off writers, one by one, with your tales of writing doom.

You’ve only ever written half a novel back in 1976 but you know it all. The world of writers needs you.

The Coveter

No one even knows you’re writing. You hold your ideas and writing close. Your work in progress is actually pinned to your chest just in case anyone wants to sneak a look.

You are so intensely shy and uncertain that you only write at night, under the covers, and with a torch. This is awkward if you happen to share your bed with someone.

You’re so paranoid about other writers knowing your writing ideas that you adopt an alias so no one will ever know your identity as a writer. Even your husband thinks you work for MI5.

The Serial Killer

In every piece of writing, someone must die. No one is safe in your novels, not even the protagonist.

Every person you’ve ever had an issue with is slain via a character. You take immense satisfaction at devising your mother-in-law’s demise or the boy who bullied you at school being skinned alive.

George R.R. Martin is jealous of your ruthless capacity to kill all the people.

The Snail

You’re nearly finished, honest. This is fine if you hadn’t been saying this since 1945.

Every piece of writing deserves the upmost care and attention.

Each word is scrutinised for meaning and referenced with a thesaurus just in case there’s a better version.

You love drafting. Being on your eleventy-billionth draft is testament to this. You refuse to let go of your writing until that magic moment when the planets align, the stars are in order, and all is right with the world.

When people ask you when your novel is being published your answer is always, ‘when it’s ready’. People have stopped asking.

The Speed Demon

You whizz through every piece of writing faster than Speedy Gonzales sniffing amphetamine.

Words cannot come out fast enough. You’re worried if you don’t type them out straight away they will go to that dark place where all good phrases die.

You don’t just have repetitive strain injury from typing; your fingers have actually been amputated and replaced with robotic digits. All the better to speed type with.

First drafts are a lottery. Whenever you revisit them you wonder if you’ll need to get an interpreter in to make sense of the lightning gibberish.

The Joiner

You cannot miss anything for fear of your work or yourself not being recognised by the world.

Every writing group has you in it. We all know because we see the same posts on social media everywhere. We know you so well we’ve made up nicknames for you, none of them kind.

The second a writing competition opens you apply, even if you don’t fit the criteria. So what if you’re not an Australian female over 35, writing flash fiction. Surely the fact you’re a 60 year-old Brit who writes war novels will not be an issue when the judges read your wonderful work?

You live for NaNoWriMo. It’s marked in your calendar. Nothing gives you more joy than posting daily word counts and boring the pants off all your non-writing friends.

If there’s a marketing or promo opp, you’ll take it. Sod the rules. Who cares of the moderator of the Facebook group says not to post links? You WILL link to your blog in every single comment you make if it kills you. The world will know you.

The ‘All the Feels’

Writing is an emotional process for you.

When characters die, you weep along with their loved ones, even though you’re the hypocrite who killed them.

As a relationship blooms you delight in your characters falling in love and then get pissed off with your spouse for not being romantic enough.

When a person in your short story is happy you wish you were writing a novel so you could remain joyous with them.

If a character is suffering, you wish you could make them feel better. Then you realise you can but hey, it’s all for the sake of the story.

The Perpetual Procrastinator

You’ll start your novel next week. You’ve been saying this for seven months.

Everything seems more important than writing. Suddenly you’re clearing out shower traps, scrubbing the grouting or cleaning the ceiling; anything other than writing.

Social media is your nemesis. That wily old git seduces you every time you switch on your computer, ready to write.

You blame Twitter and Facebook for your small attention span. If only they didn’t exist you’d get so much work done. Oh, wait a minute, you’d just be on the phone all the time instead.

The ‘All the Things’

Ideas are like expensive gems, seducing you with their beauty. You want them all.

You cannot just work on one thing at a time. Life is too short and you’re worried you could die before you write every single writing idea.

Writer’s block is stuff of legend to you. People who run dry of ideas are oddities.

It’s not unknown for you to have three novels and four short stories on the go at the same time. The problem is you can get confused and they morph into each other.

Never mind, the world could do with an adventure gothic romance novel where the main character is a bear, after all.

6 comments on “What Type of Writer Are You?”

Great article Lisa. You have been blessed with quite a sense of humour.
Found a solution for the speed demon, who you stated is “… worried if you don’t type them out straight away they will go to that dark place where all good phrases die.” Google home. When an idea pops into my head between midnight and 7 a.m., I just simply say “OK Google, and a couple of key words, i.e. ‘bridge encounter’. Google will ask what time you want the reminder. Give it a time (I always say 10 a.m. cause that’s my peak time) and voila. Problem solved. It really does work. Some of our best ideas come in the middle of the night, and if not noted immediately, take flight, never to return. For those who write it down in the wee hours, they probably don’t have a cat. It’s impossible to find the pen your cat knocked off the nightstand shortly after you went to bed. I have found
more than one pen the cat has dropped into the toilet when I get up in the morning.

Who Am I? I wish I knew sometimes. I have not been able to identify my type at this point, yet I am bits and pieces of many of your examples. Writing is both the hardest and yet the simplest thing I have ever attempted. Having no expectations makes writing ridiculously easy at times. The tragedy is that having no expectations also makes it next to impossible at others. The life of a writer. I live on the other side of insanity. I think I like it. Not sure I have any say in the matter.
Cute piece. Enjoyed it.
LCW

I suppose I’d be somewhere between the Mega Organizer and the Serial Killer, but I swear I don’t take my props to bed. My husband does, however, firmly believe I work for the Secret Service, since the strangest things tend to appear on the autocomplete of my Google search history…